USA > Illinois > Ford County > History of Ford County, Illinois : from its earliest settlement to 1908, Vol. I > Part 22
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JOHN POLLOCK was born in Harrison county, Ohio, in 1817, where he was reared on the farm, and received his education in the common and select schools of his neighborhood. In 1835 he removed with his parents to Logan county, Ohio; here he worked on the farm in the summer season, and taught district school and pursued his preparatory study of the law in the winter season. Soon after his admission to the bar by the supreme court of Ohio in 1851, he began the practice of his profession at Bellfontaine. Some years later, he, in com- pany with two others, conducted for two years a private bank in that city Mr. Pollock acting as attorney and cashier. When the firm dissolved, the business was carried on for two years longer on his own account. £ Having now been elected prosecuting attorney for his county, he gave up the banking business to
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attend to the duties of his office. In 1865. in company with his son. J. E. Pol- lock, he opened a law office in Winchester, Virginia, where they enjoyed an extensive practice until the fall of 1866, when the father made a business trip to Illinois, intending to return to Winchester, but in the meantime the legisla- ture of Virginia had enacted such liberal exemption and stay laws as to render collection of debts tedious and in some cases impossible. This induced him to take up his residence and open an office in Paxton. In 1872 he was elected a member of the lower house of the legislature of this state in the district com- posed of the counties of Livingston and Ford, and as such discharged the several duties there imposed upon him with that conscientious faithfulness that ever characterized his action, whether in public or private life. Among other valuable services rendered his constituency, especially the people of Ford county, he procured the passage of the law placing MeLean and Ford counties in one judicial circuit. In 1872, he formed a law partnership with Alfred Sample (which was dissolved by mutual consent in 1877) and for one year thereafter, the firm of Pollock & McLean was one of the leading law firms in this county. But his professional career drew rapidly to a close, his overtaxed nervous sys- tem could endure the strain no longer, and its prostration ensued to such an extent that he was compelled to relinquish his law business entirely and retire to private life. In his practice, he was a careful, painstaking lawyer. always aiming to secure all legal rights of his client in every emergency, while his naturally sympathetic disposition impelled him to extra effort in behalf of the poor or unfortunate who entrusted their cases to his management.
ALFRED SAMPLE was born in Butler county, Ohio. November 27, 1846. He came to Illinois in 1857. lived and labored on the farm until he was sixteen years of age when he enlisted in Company G. One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Illinois Infantry, and fought resolutely for his country until May, 1864. IIe received severe wounds in both arms and breast in the battle at Resaca, Geor- gia, and on account of which he was discharged in December, 1864. In January, 1865, he entered Eureka College, where, and at Monmouth College. he pur- sned a course for four years with a view of the study of law. Afterward taught school for a short time. He read law with Colonel R. G. Ingersoll at Peoria, Illinois, and was admitted to the bar in December. 1870; came immediately to Paxton and formed a partnership with M. II. Cloud, under the firm name of Cloud & Sample, which lasted until the fall of 1872, when the firm of Pollock & Sample was formed, and was dissolved in 1877. In 1872, he was elected states attorney for this county, and was reelected to the same office in 1876, by a large majority. In 1880 he was chosen elector on the republican ticket,
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and cast his vote in the electoral college for James A. Garfield for president, and Chester A. Arthur for vice president. From the beginning he was a remarkably successful lawyer, and was employed in several of the most import- ant suits ever tried in the county, among which may be mentioned his employ- ment by the railroad and warehouse commissioners to prosecute the Wabash Company for making unjust discriminations in their rates for carriage of freight between Peoria. Illinois, and New York, and between Gilman and New York. By nature adapted to the profession of the law, possessing tact, energy, industry and invincible determination, he allowed no cessation of hostilities until he was completely victorious or utterly vanquished. He for years served on the circuit bench.
MILTON II. CLOUD was born in Hamilton county, Ohio, July 24, 1842. came to Illinois in 1850. and settled on a farm in Tazewell county, where he lived until he was twenty years old, when he enlisted in the Eighty-sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and served his country valiantly for three years as color-bearer. At the battle of Kenesaw Mountain he received two severe wounds. After the close of his military service he entered Eureka College for a time, then read law at Pekin, Illinois, and during the winter of 1866 was a student at the Chicago Law School, after which he completed his preparatory study of the law at Metamora, Illinois, in the office of R. T. Cassell & Son. Ile was admitted to practice in 1867, and commenced practice at El Paso, Illi- nois; came to Paxton in January, 1869, and soon acquired a fair practice. In 1871, the partnership of Cloud & Sample was begun and continued until 1872. Mr. Cloud was also states attorney for the county during the partnership. For the year 1875 he was city attorney for the city of Paxton. In 1876, he became a member of the loan and real-estate firm of Hanley, Sutton, Cloud & Day. Mr. Cloud in the examination of titles, is probably as proficient as any attorney in this part of the state. In 1882, he was appointed master in chancery for the county by O. T. Reeves, circuit judge. In 1886 he was elected county judge of Ford county.
JOHN R. KINNEAR was born July 26. 1843, at West Point. Tippecanoe county, Indiana. He removed with his parents to Kingston, Ross county, Ohio, in 1844, and thence to Bloomington. Illinois, in the fall of 1849, and again to Walnut Grove, Woodford county, Illinois, in the spring of 1850; young Kin- near was reared on the farm. He attended Eureka College at Galesburg, Illi- nois and remained there until Angust, 1862, when he enlisted in Company A, Eighty-sixth Illinois Volunteer Infantry, August 22, 1862. His regiment was mustered into the service August 27, at Peoria, Illinois, and on September 7,
JUDGE J. H. MOFFETT, DECEASED, PAXTON
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was ordered to Louisville, Kentucky, and immediately began active service. The regiment, belonging to the Army of the Cumberland, has an excellent record for fighting qualities, having been engaged in twenty-two pitched battles, besides numerous skirmishes. Mr. Kinnear was constantly with his regiment, except one month of sickness at Nashville, and kept a daily record of its operations. After having faithfully served his country for four years, lacking two months and twenty-two days, he was mustered out with his regiment at Washington, District of Columbia, June 6, 1865. On his return to his home he was solicited by his comrades to prepare a history of the regiment from his notes, which he did in 1866. How well he performed his work is best shown by the fact that more than two thousand volumes were published and sold at one dollar and fifty cents per volume. Soon after he reached home he began the study of the law in the office of Judge Charles H. Chitty, at Metamora, Illinois. After reading two years in the office, he attended the Chicago Law School, during the winter of 1867-68, and located in Paxton in March of the latter year. Here he formed a partnership with Hon. C. II. Frew, which was dissolved July 20, 1871; he served as city attorney for the city of Paxton during the years 1869-70-71, and as master in chancery for Ford county four years, from August 28, 1873. In January, 1881, he formed a law partnership with John II. Moffett, which lasted until his removal from Paxton. During his residence in Paxton he success- fully conducted a large and lucrative practice, and was engaged in many of the most important suits tried in this county. Among them he was of counsel for General Hendrix, indicted for murder in McLean county, who was acquitted. He was married to Rebecca Means, of Bloomington, Illinois, June 2, 1868, and by whom he had two children, Ritchey and Zeta.
HION. CALVIN H. FREW is the son of Robert and Anna S. Frew, and a native of Cleveland, Ohio. He was raised on a farm, and devoted much of his time to reading, when not engaged in farm or other labor. When seventeen years old, he began teaching school, paving a share of his wages to his father, and using the remainder to pay his own expenses at the high school, and at Beaver Academy in Pennsylvania, and later, at the Vermilion Institute in Ohio. In 1862 he became the principal of the high school at Kalida, Ohio, and occu- pied a similar position in the high school at Young America, Illinois, in 1863-64. In this way he paid indebtedness incurred in obtaining his education, and at the same time pursued his preparatory study of law. In the spring of 1865 he settled in Paxton, and there puesned his study in the law until the following December, when he was admitted to the bar by the supreme court of Illinois. In 1868, less than three years after his admission to the bar, he was elected to
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the general assembly from Ford and Iroquois counties. During his first term as a member of that body, he became distinguished on account of his, then sup- posed, unconstitutional and radical views touching the power of the state to regulate the charges of the railway companies for the carriage of passengers and freight. On January 19. 1869. he introduced and supported by an able argument the following resolution: "Resolved that all privileges, powers or prerogatives acquired by railroad companies of the state government are subor- dinate to the general welfare of the people or community where constructed, and that the right of the state to exercise a reasonable control over such com- panies is one of which no power can divest the people." The doctrine embodied in this resolution has since become the settled law of the land, having been de- clared such by the supreme court of Illinois, as well as by the supreme court of the United States. In 1870, he was reelected by a large majority from the coun- ties of Ford and Kankakee. During this term also, he took an active part in securing amendments to and the passage of some of the most beneficial statutes of the state now in force. In 1878 he was elected a third time to the legislature, this time representing the counties of Ford and Livingston; one of the most im- portant laws passed by the legislature at this session was that requiring the foreclosure of trust deeds and mortgages in court instead of by advertisement, the passage of which Mr. Frew urged with his usual zeal and force. In public life Mr. Frew has always been diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving his constituency with that earnestness and fearlessness characteristic of men of bold, independent mind.
F. L. Cook was a native of New York. Besides having a good common- school education. he attended Eureka College in Woodford county and Knox Col- lege at Galesburg, Illinois, for more than five years. ITis father having enlisted in the Union army, his son had to quit college to oversee his business affairs, that of grain buyer and railway agent at Kappa. Woodford county, Illinois. This he did from 1862 to 1866. In the fall of the latter year he went to the national capital as an employe of the state, to collect soldiers' claims, where he was en- gaged for three years. He then acted as private secretary for Senator Culhun. then a member of the lower house of congress from Illinois, afterward as clerk of the two house committee on territories and foreign affairs during the years 1869, 1870, 1871, as well as having charge of the payment of United States marshals in the census office. In June, 1871, he graduated from the Columbia Law School, D. C., but had been admitted to practice in Hlinois, and located at Paxton as a lawyer soon thereafter. The city council appointed him its attorney to fill the unexpired term of J. C. Patton, deceased, and in 1877, he was appointed master
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in chancery for this county by Judge O. T. Reeves. At the general election in 1880 he was elected states attorney for Ford county.
CHARLES H. YEOMANS, one of the first settled and most successful attorneys in Gibson City, was born in Delaware county, New York, December 2, 1846, and came to Illinois in 1850. In July, 1871, he graduated from Ripon College, Wis- consin, and received the degree of A. B., and in 1879 the degree of A. M. from the same institution. While pursuing his classical course at Ripon, he also read law under the supervision of IIon. Jesse Dobbs, at Ripon, and during vacations in the office of Hon. C. H. Wood, at Onarga, Illinois. In October, 1870, he was admitted to the Wisconsin bar, and to the Illinois bar in 1872 at Ottawa, Illinois, having located at Gibson the preceding July. By close attention to his profes- sional business and untiring fidelity to his clients' interests, he secured a full share of law business. as well as the confidence and esteem of his fellow citizens He held the office of city attorney for his adopted city, and was a member of the board of education. He was public spirited and enterprising, taking an active part in whatever movements were inaugurated for the social or commercial ad- vancement of the young and flourishing city of his adoption so fortunately located in the fertile valley of the Sangamon river.
J. RHEESE PATRICK, fourth son of Mr. A. C. and Mrs. C. HI. Patrick was born March 4, 1858, at Rural Valley, in Armstrong county, Pennsylvania. During his boyhood days, until he was fifteen years old, he attended the common schools of his neighborhood in winter time and worked at the carpenter's trade during his vacations. Subsequently he took the full classical course of study at the Glade Run Academy, located at Dayton, Pennsylvania, and in the spring of 1879 completed the post-graduate course in that institution, which entitled him to en- ter the sophomore class in college In the fall of 1879 he engaged to teach the public school at Pellsville, Vermilion county, Illinois, as principal, which position he occupied for three successive years, and in the meantime began and completed his preparatory study of the law under the supervision of Messrs. Kinnear & Moffett, attorneys in Paxton. In May. 1882. he was admitted to the bar by the ap- pellate court at Springfield, Illinois For six months thereafter he studied and worked in his profession in the office of Hon. Calvin H. Frew, of Paxton. He then opened an office and practiced on his own account. At the spring election of 1883, he had the honor to be elected to the office of city attorney for the city of Paxton, after a close contest, Milton II. Cloud, an older and more experienced lawyer, being his opponent.
DR. LOCKHART BROOKS FARRAR was born at Langdon, Cheshire county, New Hampshire, August 29, 1822. The death of his father occurred when the sub-
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ject of this sketch was about four years old. His mother then removed with her family to Walpole, New Hampshire, where his boyhood and early manhood years were passed. After attending the common schools and different academies in his native state, he taught school for some years in various towns in New Hamp- shire and Vermont. He began the study of medicine in the office of Dr. George Smith, of Walpole, and completed his preliminary course in his profession with the late Dr. Hubbard Groves, of Nashua, New Hampshire. His first course of lectures was given at Woodstock, Vermont, but he received his diploma from the Berkshire Medical College, of Massachusetts, commencing in 1848. He prac- ticed his profession for three years at Hollis, New Hampshire, then moved to Manchester, Massachusetts. The winter of 1854-55 he spent at the Jefferson Medical College, at Philadelphia, and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York city, and in the hospitals of those cities. In the spring of 1856 he came to Illinois, and to Paxton in the fall of 1858. In 1868 he began the study of law, and in 1871 took the law diploma from the Michigan University and was admitted to the Illionis bar the same year. He opened a law office at Paxton and practiced that profession for abont four years and then returned to the practice of medicine.
S. P. MCLEAN was born May 9, 1852, in Hancock county, Virginia. He resided in Carrollton, Ohio, half a dozen years, and then removed to Vermont, Illinois. in 1860. He was taught the harnessmaker's trade by his father, and thereby earned the money to give him a good college education.
He read law with Gest & Pooks, of Rock Island, Illinois, was licensed to prac- tice on examination by the supreme court of Illinois, at Ottawa, in September. 1877. and in the fall of the same year came to Paxton and formed a law partner- ship with Hon. Jolm Pollock, under the firm name of Pollock & MeLean. A year later. Pollock retired from the practice of the profession, and MeLean continued the business. At the spring election in 1879. he was elected city attorney for the city of Paxton, which position he held, in addition to a good general practice, until May. 1880, when he resigned as city attorney. boxed his law library and entered journalism, beginning as reporter on the Bloomington (III.) Daily Mail. As a newspaper man he was a "Bohemian." having been engaged in reportorial and editorial work on the Sedalia (Mo.) Bazoo, the Great Southwest of St. Louis, the Decatur Herald, Bloomington Mail, Lincoln Times and other sheets, and was editor of the Kankakee Times, and where his friends jokingly said he was put under bonds to stay at least a year as a condition precedent to his employment. Ile was quite spicy and versatile as a writer, and held the usual adjustable polit- ical notions of newspaper reporters. On July 13, 1881. he was united in
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marriage with Miss Nealy Bruyn, eldest daughter of W. II. Bruyn, of Paxton, Illinois.
S. P. RADY, attorney at law, at Gibson, Illinois, was born in Floyd county, Indiana, in 1853. Until he was fifteen years old he worked on his father's farm in the summer season and attended the district school of his neighborhood during the winter. At the age of fifteen he became an assistant teacher in the high school in Galena, under his brother, William Rady. For the next nine years he taught school a part of the time and attended school the remainder of the time. While so engaged he went to Hartsville University, Indiana, and the National Normal School at Lebanon, Ohio, and graduated there in the scientific course in 1877. For three years thereafter he was principal of the high school at Lon- adeser, Kentucky. Some time afterward, he accepted the principalship of the Gibson city public school, which he held for one year.
JAMES HENRY LOTT was born May 7, 1855, at Charleston, in the state of South Carolina. His father was of mixed blood, being equally Indian and African, and was a free man and a carpenter by trade. His mother was a quadroon and a slave, and by descent a granddaughter of Governor Pickens, of that state. Henry went to Boston in 1865, as valet to Colonel Nutt, of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Colored Volunteers, and in the fall of the same year came to Tuscola, Illinois, where he attended the public schools until 1873, and in the meantime learned the barber's trade. In 1878 he went to Terre Haute, Indiana, where he read law in the office of Doris & Doris, for eighteen months, and in 1881 came to Paxton, Illinois, and resumed his law studies in October of the latter year, under the supervision of A. Sample. On the 23d day of November, 1863, he was admitted to the bar, after a rigid examination by a committee of three eminent lawyers, appointed by the appellate court of the third district, then in session at the state capital, to examine applicants for
admission. His knowledge of his chosen profession in thoroughness and extent was undoubtedly equal to if not above the average of beginners. He certainly deserved much credit for the determination he has shown to succeed, for it must be remembered that during most of the time he had been engaged in preparation for the law practice, he earned a livelihood for himself and family at the barber's chair, and only acquired his knowledge of law and other subjects while others slept.
JOHN II. MOFFETT, who in 1884 was one of the youngest and most success- ful members of our bar, was born in Clayton, Adams county, Illinois, Febru- ary 25, 1857. In 1859 he emigrated with his parents to Bloomington, Indiana, and in the spring of 1865 to Paxton, Illinois. Here he graduated from the
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publie school, standing at the head of his classes, in 1875. Desiring more extended education, he repaired to Monmouth College in the fall of the same year and there studiously applied himself until the spring of 1877, when he began his investigations of the intricacies of the law in the office of John R. Kinnear, then one of the leading lawyers of the Ford county bar, and in Jan- mary. 1880, was admitted to practice. Ile immediately formed a partnership with his preceptor under the firm name of Kinnear & Moffett, which lasted until May. 1883, when Mr. Kinnear took his departure for Seattle, Washing- ton. After that, he conducted as resident partner the law business of the firm of Tipton & Moffett. During the years 1881-82, he held the office of city attor- ney for the city of Paxton.
THE PRESENT MEMBERS OF THE FORD COUNTY BAR are: Milton H. Cloud, and F. M. Thompson. composing the firm of Cloud & Thompson; A. MeElroy; C. H. Frew; H. H. Kerr (now county judge) and Frank Lindley, composing the firm of Kerr & Lindley; M. L. McQuiston and G. Frederick, McQuiston & Frederick, C. E. Beach; R. A. MeCracken; Samuel Ludlow and A. L. Phillips, Phillips & Ludlow; C. S. Schneider and R. L Schneider, Schneider & Schneider; O. II. Wylie; Harry Duffield, (city attorney) Paxton; II. P. Beach, M. H. Scott, Piper City; L. A. Cranston, (states attorney) Gib- son City.
THE FORD CIRCUIT COURT.
The legislature of the state of Illinois in the act organizing Ford county placed it in the eighth judicial circuit, and provided that the judge of said cir- cuit should hold a term of court. on the organization of the county, at a place to be designated by the county court.
At this date, 1859, the counties of Logan, MeLean, DeWitt. Champaign and Vermilion comprised the eighth district.
February 4, 1861. an act was passed, organizing the twenty-seventh judi- cial cireuit, in which were placed the counties of Vermilion, Champaign, Douglas and Ford. Our county remained in this circuit until 1867. when on Jan- uary 29, by an act of the legislature, the counties of Moultrie, Shelby, Macon, Piatt, Fayette, Champaign and Ford were united in the seventeenth circuit.
In April, 1872, the legislature again changed the circuit, placing us in the twentieth, with the counties of Kankakee, Iroquois and Livingston.
Under act of the legislature approved and in force March 28, 1873. the state was again divided into circuits, MeLean and Ford constituting the four-
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teenth. By act June 2, 1877, in force July 1, 1877, the state, exclusive of Cook county, was divided into thirteen circuits. The counties of MeLean, Ford, Kankakee, Iroquois and Livingston forming the eleventh.
The arrangement of counties under this act, together with the additional judge elected under its provisions, made the number of judges in each of said circuits three.
The following judges have held circuit courts in Ford county: Hons. David Davis, Charles Emerson, O. L. Davis, James Steel, A. J. Gallagher, Charles H. Wood, Thomas F. Tipton, J. W. Cochran, O. T. Reeves, N. J. Pills- bury, Franklin Blades, Alfred Sample, Charles R. Starr, Colestin D. Myers, George W. Patton, John H. Moffett and Thomas M. Harris.
The first term of the Ford county circuit court was held at the City Hotel in Paxton, November 18, 1859.
The Hon. David Davis, of Bloomington, was the presiding judge; Samuel L. Day, clerk; Howard Case, sheriff; and Ward H. Lamon, states attorney. The first grand jurors were James P. Button, Matthew Elliott, Milton Strayer, Obadiah Campbell, Sidney Morgan, Solomon Burt, John B. Buell, Leander Britt, Lindsey Corbley, John Brown, Leander Butts, John P. Day, Richard Bryan, John Dopps, Sr., William Bryan, Robert Eggleston, Peter Van Antwerp, Robert N. Scovill and William Newlin.
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